Penguin Guide Rosette Winners

“it is the most searching and penetrating account of the work to have appeared in recent year and, given the excellence and truthfulness of the recording, must carry the strongest and most enthusiastic recommendation.” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition

“With Gerald Moore (who returned to the studio out of retirement especially for the occasion) still at this finest, this is a hugely satisfying collection...There are no texts, but this remains an unmissable reissue.” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition ****

“This is the most beautiful of Mozart playing, his last piano concerto given here by Emil Gilels with total clarity. This is a classic performance, memorably accompanied by the VPO and Böhm. Suffice it to say that Gilels sees everything and exaggerates nothing, that the performance has an Olympian authority and serenity, and that the Larghetto is one of the glories of the gramophone. He's joined by his daughter Elena in the Double Piano Concerto in E flat, and their physical relationship is mirrored in the quality, and the mutual understanding of the playing: both works receive marvellous interpretations.
We think Emil plays first, Elena second, but could be quite wrong. The VPO under Karl Böhm is at its best; and so is the quality of recording, with a good stereo separation of the two solo parts, highly desirable in this work.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“What is so striking about Pears's performance is its intensity. One continually has the sense of a live occasion...As for Britten, he recreates the music, sometimes with a fair freedom from Schubert's markings, but always with scrupulous concern for the overall musical shaping and sense of atmosphere.” Penguin Guide, 2010 edition ****

“This 1951 mono recording set the benchmark for many years, and so it probably did much to establish the current, questionable norms of tempo. But it's superb performance, played with skill and sensitivity and unfailingly musical.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2008

“This was the first ever recording of VerklärteNacht in its original sextet form and it remains unsurpassed. When it was first reviewed in Gramophone, the late Lionel Salter wrote of it as being 'beautifully played with the most careful attention to details of dynamics and phrasing, with unfailing finesse, with consistently sympathetic tone, and, most important, with a firm sense of the basic structure'. The Schubert too fully deserves its classic status. The tranquillity of the slow movement has never been conveyed with greater nobility or more perfect control.
The Hollywood Quartet made music for the sheer love of it and as a relaxation from their duties in the film-studio orchestras, for which they were conspicuously over-qualified.
They have incomparable ensemble and blend; and their impeccable technical address and consummate tonal refinement silence criticism.
To add to the pleasure, the transfers could not be better.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“The Hollywood Quartet's 1951 version Schubert's magical Quintet...stands apart from all others. Over half a century on, its qualities of freshness and poetry, as well as an impeccably confident address, still impress as deeply as ever...This disc is the product of consummate artistry and remains very special indeed.” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition

“carefully remastered and sounding remarkably real and vivid...her range of expression runs the whole gamut...A performance that should be in every collection.” Penguin Guide, 2010 edition ***

“Frauenliebe Baker's 'heroine' is knowing, so that the early rapture seems tainted by hindsight. But the voice is sovereign; awesome in its control, majestic in its command.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2006 ****